Thank Goodness That's Over

Yesterday was a stressful day for me. Well, the beginning was stressful. I had my summative meeting with my principal and that's always stressful with her. During the meeting the teacher and principal talk about they year and how things went. The end of year evaluation takes place, and rates things like, how well you followed policies, how your communication with parents went, did you fulfill the staff development requirement,etc.

I felt the year went okay. There was definitely stress between my Principal and I. Alot of the stress came from the district and the pressure they put on the principals. Some of it came from personal differences. Example, discipline is a big area where we differ. I understand that students that are removed from the classroom for disciplinary issues don't learn as much as they do from being in the actual classroom. However, if nothing is done when the behavior starts then the students (especially sixth graders) feel they can get away with just about anything and the behavior issues increase. I'm of the opinion that if you make a point of the behavior early, it will curb any issues later on. Many of our behavior issues could have been handled before Christmas and the students would be fine in the spring while we're gearing up for that last push before TAKS (wrong as it might seem). But when nothing is handled in the fall semester things get worse in the spring. Then you REALLY can't do much because you don't want them to lose precious classroom instruction time.

So we've butted heads a little bit over that. And then there was the issue about denying Caroline's transfer which led to us moving Jack back to Yale so we wouldn't have two kids in two places. That was just wrong in my opinion.

Then, my students didn't do as well as I'd hoped. I was frustrated with them because they knew the material, but wouldn't show it on tests and assessments. So even though the district said the results were strictly for instructional purposes (yeah right!) more pressure was placed on us because it appeared as if we weren't doing our jobs. My mantra this year quickly became, "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink." It wasn't until the last benchmark that my principal began to see that maybe it wasn't me (the entire sixth grade in the district tanked the last benchmark - the district average was a 62, and our school's sixth grade average was a 77).

So yesterday's meeting caused some stress for me. Turns out I still have a job (which is great!), I will still be in sixth grade math (which is okay), and I didn't get a bad score (which is great!). So now maybe I can relax and get the kids ready for some 7th grade math!